Email Analytics: How to Track What’s Working and What Isn’t

In the ever-changing landscape of online marketing, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed.

Email marketing works, and it works well.

It drives the highest ROI of all B2B strategies. In fact, studies show that email marketing campaigns earn $44 for every $1 spent. Nice.

With email analytics, the more you know, the better, so you need to have a handle on your email marketing analytics.

When it comes to email marketing, it’s crucial to understand exactly how your audience is interacting with the content showing up in their inbox. In this post, we will explore how to track and interpret results for key email marketing metrics.

Google Analytics Email Tracking 101

Using Google Analytics for email tracking is an essential tool.

Once you set up tracking, you’ll be able to see how well links in your emails are performing, what percentage of your traffic is opting into your list, where visitors are converting on your site, and more.

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Don’t forget: Hard bounce rates are a key indicator used by internet service providers (ISPs) to determine sender reputation. Always clean up your email lists promptly when these issues crop up. If you don’t, your email account could be frozen.

4) Conversion Rate

Email conversion rate measures how effective your email is, in relation to your objective. Always be aware of this and how it averages at different times and levels.

The conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who complete a desired action (or become customers). It really depends on your conversion goal.

Here’s how to calculate your email conversion rate:

(Number of users who have completed the action / Emails delivered) x 100

Calculating your conversion rate is a two-step equation.

Divide the number of signups (or purchases) by the total number of successful emails deliveries.

Multiply that number by 100.

Simple.

Once you’ve got your head around your email conversion rate, you can compare it to industry benchmarks to see how it stacks up.

Experiment with different CTAs and monitor the effects on your conversion rate.

5) Opt-Out / Unsubscribe Rate

Having people unsubscribe from your email list is inevitable.

Keeping track of these trends is important for you to understand why your audience may not be engaging. Ideally, you want the number of unsubscribes to be lower than the number of new users.

If this rate rises, it’s time to do some digging. Examine your list-building tactics, email content, and sending schedule. Are you making any obvious mistakes that could be causing your audience to scroll past your emails? If nothing jumps out at you as an immediate problem to fix, consider running A/B tests to work out why.

Some aspects of email testing can include:

Subject lines

Send name

Send time

Email content formatting

CTAs within emails

One way to determine what to test is to simply ask people why they opted-out. Email service providers usually allow you to survey users who unsubscribe. Your survey doesn’t have to be super complex, just offer subscribers a few possible reasons to choose and reply:

So What Can I Learn From My Email Analytics?

There are lots of other email marketing metrics to consider, but you want to focus on metrics that are important to your business.

What do these important metrics actually tell you? And what can you learn from your email analytics? (I’m glad you asked.)

Who is reading your email? – Check your email reports to see the number of people who opened your email. Note your most engaged audience members and perhaps reward them with a loyalty discount.

What did your subscribers like in your email? – Have a look at your click-through rate and unique clicks to see what content your list is liking the most. This will help guide you when it comes to creating content. If a topic is getting a lot of attention, it makes sense to produce more and feed your audience’s interest.

When’s the best time to email? – Find the sending schedule that gets the most engagement. Once you know, stick to it and be consistent so your audience starts to expect your emails.

On what device are people reading your email? – Find out whether people are reading your emails on mobile or desktop, then make sure you are using a responsive email template.

Glew helps you grow revenue is by creating segments based on different factors like purchase histories or physical location. Segmentation is a highly effective way to get your customers to open your emails and click through to your store.

Get Started With Email Analytics Today

With a store powered by Managed WooCommerce Hosting and analytics through Glew.io, your store will be able to create customer segments, customize marketing emails easily, and generate more customers.

About the Author

Jessica Frick is Liquid Web's Product Manager for our Managed WordPress offerings. When she's not obsessing about all things digital, you can find her enjoying quality time with her family, binging a sci-fi series, or brewing some iced tea. Following her on Twitter might be the easiest thing you do all day.